As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As consumer demand increases for smaller and denser information handling systems, manufacturers strive to integrate more computer components into a smaller space. This integration has led to the development of several applications, including high density servers. A high density server provides the computer processing resources of several computers in a small amount of space. A typical arrangement for a high density server includes a shared power supply, a management module, a connection board (e.g., a back-plane or mid-plane) and server modules, such as blade server modules.
Blade server modules, or blades, are miniaturized server modules that typically share a common power supply and cooling system within a server. Typically, a blade includes a circuit board with one or more processors, memory, a connection port, and possibly a disk drive for storage. By stacking several blades in a server like books on a shelf, a high density server achieves significant cost savings over conventional servers. This saving is a direct result from the sharing of common resources (i.e., electrical power) and the reduction of space within the server while providing a significant increase in computer processing power.
Because each blade in a server may be viewed as a computer system, each blade may require separate input and output (I/O) connections. This creates a potential problem when there are several blades installed in a server and each requires a separate I/O connection for a video, keyboard and mouse (KVM) connection. Because the blades are ultra small and closely stacked in a server, connectivity (i.e., cabling) to each blade becomes quite difficult.